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Analysing Rita
Task F – Answers
Initiation/response
Although Frank begins with two initiations, one in turn 1 and one in
turn 5, Rita quickly becomes the initiator of most of the conversational
exchanges and Frank merely responds to her initiations. Apart from turns
1 and 5, the only exceptions to this general rule are turn 31, his invitation
for her to sit down, and turn 33, his request for clarification concerning
what it is that she wants to smoke. This last item is, in any case, arguably
a response to her request in turn 32. So the initiation/response data
contrast with our schematic expectations and correspond with what the
other forms of analysis have shown.
Speech acts
Given the situation, we would expect Frank to ask the questions and Rita
to answer them. But Frank utters only 7 questions in the whole extract,
three of which (‘Pardon?’ twice and ‘tobacco?’)
are requests for clarification concerning something which Rita has just
said. Rita, on the other hand, asks a total of 19 questions, only two
of which can be said to be requests for clarification.
There are other speech acts in addition to the questions and answers
which dominate then extract. Rita contradicts Frank in turn 11, the first
sentence of turn 14 and in turn 18, suggesting her confident personality.
She asks for permission (to smoke) in 32, offers (Frank a cigarette) in
34 and promises (not to tell anyone if he smokes a cigarette) in turn
38. This variety of speech act behaviour is at odds with the question-answering
role that schematically we would expect her to perform.
Frank mainly responds, apart from the questions we have already mentioned.
He also contradicts Rita in 19 in defending his use of the word ‘beautiful’
and invites (Rita to sit down in 31). These two speech acts, because they
are usually used by the conversationally powerful, look as if they are
attempts by Frank to regain some measure of control over the conversation,
but of course he does not succeed, and overall Rita uses a richer array
of speech acts than he does, suggesting that she is more at ease than
he is.
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